Military Family Deals with Relocation

Emily Stephens taught TouchMath to her daughter Daylan at exactly the right time - before it was too late. Then a 10-year-old with poor self-esteem, Daylan hated math! Low standardized test scores led teachers to conclude that she was developmentally challenged. One administrator thought it would be a blessing if she graduated from high school.

Thankfully, those early aptitude assessments were egregiously wrong. From Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, she graduated Summa Cum Laude with a bachelor's degree in English. She has also obtained a master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Southern Mississippi. But how well did she perform in math?

"I received pretty much all As in college math classes. Through it all, I used TouchMath."

This story really begins before Daylan was born. Emily's husband was with the U.S. military, so the couple moved often: Thailand, Florida, California and Korea. New military assignments didn't stop after Daylan was born. Emily remembers how difficult it was for Daylan to be a preschooler in a traveling family.

"We moved to Virginia right before she started kindergarten, and she wasn't trying to make new friends. When we asked her why, Daylan flatly said, 'We are just going to move.'"

As a substitute teacher herself, Emily committed to a drastic solution: she had Daylan repeat kindergarten. Her daughter then demonstrated progress in reading, but Daylan still lacked the ability to remember answers to simple math problems such as 5 + 4. Then the family moved once again, to England.

Emily tried everything to unblock this math learning barrier, from flashcards to manipulatives - even employing a tutor twice a week. But to no avail. Fate would have it that Emily's path crossed with TouchMath's cofounder Lyn Strand, who was then also in England with her husband on a military assignment. Lyn introduced Emily to the TouchMath program.

Daylan recalls this vital good fortune. "Miss Lyn, the miracle worker. If it weren't for her I don't know where I would be today."

Emily laughingly agrees: "It was like the sun came from behind the clouds. We started during the summer between third and fourth grades. TouchMath gave her the boost she needed to feel good about herself and things just kept getting better."

In a short time, Daylan could add and subtract numbers quickly without guessing. "The placement of the dots on the numbers helped me remember which number was which. After that, math came swiftly."

Emily concurs that TouchMath had a magical effect on her daughter. "I like the simplicity of it. Anyone can teach it. You don't need to have an educational background. An aid, homeschooling mom or volunteer can teach it."

However, Daylan doesn't think of TouchMath today as a quaint math program she learned as a child. "I probably wouldn't have ranked sixth in my high school class and number one in college if it wasn't for TouchMath. Today I use it for balancing my checkbook and auditing my credit card statements."

It is clear that this globe-trotting family found a safe learning harbor in TouchMath's intuitive multisensory learning method. In a sense, it kept them together in one location... a place called "Math Mastery."